Potato Doughnuts Have Arrived

Do you find the chewy denseness of the cake doughnut totally irresistible? Or are you a devotee of the light and fluffy yeast doughnut? It doesn’t matter what side you are on, because potato doughnuts are here now, and they are truly the best thing that’s happened to doughnuts—or potatoes, for that matter—in a long time.

I first encountered the potato doughnut on a trip to Portland, Maine. Desperately seeking breakfast for the drive back to New York, I stopped at The Holy Donut, recommended to me by my Airbnb host. Intending to buy one, I ended up buying five—raspberry, toasted coconut, lemon, chocolate sea salt, and ginger. They were the tastiest doughnuts I had tried in a very long time: fluffy like a beignet, and moist like that cake Bruce Bogtrotter eats in Matilda—the best of both the cake and the yeast combined. My favorite, a dense, deeply dark chocolate doughnut topped with specks of sea salt, rivaled all chocolate desserts.

Leigh Kellis, the owner of the Holy Donut, said she came up with the concept when she was looking for a doughnut made with really high-quality ingredients. Her friend suggested folding in riced white russet potatoes (Maine’s #1 crop) into standard cake doughnut dough—a technique borrowed from The Joy of Cooking—and the potato doughnut was reborn. She found that not only was the potato doughnut fluffier than any donut she had tried before, but it also didn’t dry out like other ones she had tasted.

To read the rest of the story, please go to: Bon Appetit